The Tree House in the Rain

The tree house had been Daisy’s brother’s, and then it had been nobody’s, and now it was Daisy’s.

It was in the big tree at the back, and it had a floor and three walls and a roof, and a gap for a door, and one window with no glass. Daisy could lie down in it if she bent her knees. It was exactly the right size.

She was in it when the rain came.

She had gone up after lunch with a cushion and a book and a packet of raisins, and the light through the leaves had been green and gold, and she had not noticed the sky. Then there was a sound on the roof. One tap. Then two. And then the whole roof was going at once.

She thought about going down. But the rope was wet already, and the back door of the house seemed very far away, across all that rain.

She did not go down.

She pulled the cushion into the corner, where the roof was best, and sat on it with her knees up, and listened.

Rain on a tree house is not like rain on a house. The roof is just above your head, and it is thin, and the rain comes down on it like fingers, hundreds of fingers, all at once. And all round are the leaves, and the rain is on them too, going patter and drip, and the whole tree is full of the sound, and you are in the middle of it, dry.

Something came up the rope.

A scrabble, a pause, a scrabble. And then a grey face came over the edge of the doorway, wet, ears flat, and looked at her.

“Pudding,” said Daisy.

Pudding was the cat. He was grey and old, and he did not, as a rule, climb things. Yet here he was, with rain on his whiskers, looking as if it were her fault.

He came in. He shook himself, which sent water on the book. Then he came to the cushion, wet as he was, and pushed himself into the space between Daisy’s knees and her chest, and sat there, and began to purr.

“You’re soaking,” said Daisy.

Pudding purred. He did not care what he was.

She put her arms round him. He was cold on the outside and warm underneath, and the cold went away as she held him, and the purr came up through her jumper, steady, like a small engine that would go all day.

The rain got heavier. The light went dim and green. A drip started, in the corner she was not in, one drop and then another, tock, tock, into a small puddle on the floor. Daisy watched it. Pudding did not.

She thought about the house, with its lights and its kettle and its big dry rooms, and about herself in the tree, in a box no bigger than a bed, with a wet cat and a packet of raisins. And she thought she would not change places with anyone.

She ate the raisins. Pudding was offered one and looked at it with contempt.

Slowly, the rain thought about stopping.

It went from heavy to steady, and from steady to soft, and from soft to only the leaves dripping, tock, patter, tock, which is a sound that goes on long after the rain has finished. A blackbird started up somewhere, testing whether it was safe.

Pudding had gone to sleep.

Daisy did not want to move him. So she stayed where she was, with her back in the corner and the old grey cat in the middle of her, breathing slow, and the tree dripping round them both.

From the house, faintly, someone called her name.

“In a minute,” she said, to nobody, very quietly.

The drip in the corner slowed. Tock. And a while later, tock. And a while later, nothing.

The tree house held them. The tree held the tree house. The rain had gone on somewhere else, over the roofs, over the town, and left behind it a garden that shone, and a cat that purred, and a girl who was in no hurry at all.